


Only the Good

by blacksatinpointeshoes



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Family Dynamics, Gen, Mind Manipulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-blaseball through Grand Siesta, Shelled One Boss Fight(s) (Blaseball)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 12:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30139557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksatinpointeshoes/pseuds/blacksatinpointeshoes
Summary: Inside the peanut is dark. It’s warm, though, cramped but cozy, and the Shelled One speaks to York in low hums. It loves him, it says. It will care for him.Our dork,says the Shelled One, and York tosses and turns within the cage, trying to get comfortable.An incomplete history of York Silk in the Discipline Era, looking towards the future.
Relationships: Nagomi Mcdaniel/York Silk's Mother, York Silk & Lady Friday, York Silk & Nagomi Mcdaniel, York Silk & York Silk's Mother, York Silk & the Shelled One
Comments: 11
Kudos: 26





	Only the Good

**Author's Note:**

> I finished writing this fic not 12 hours before York was incinerated, and though I considered changing the ending to reflect the events of the new era, I decided against it in order to leave York's story here on a positive note. I'm sure there'll be York's incineration content in many other places, this just happens not to be one of them.
> 
> There are quite a few CWs that I want to note that couldn't be encapsulated in an AO3 tag: claustrophobia, blood, depictions of physical pain, emotional manipulation, emotional neglect by a parent, emotional overburden by a parent, (non major character) death, and guilt tripping. 
> 
> That said, this is a story about trauma, families, and non-linear healing in any ways we can. Although it has taken on new meaning in my eyes in light of York's death, I hope that it holds its original one nonetheless, and that you enjoy your read.

York is crying. It’s not the sniffling, easily comforted cries of an eight year old; in fact, it’s hardly crying, but choked-back, gasping sobs that are difficult to speak through, an overwhelmed anger and grief. Nagomi is holding a slip of paper she knows well: an Election transfer slip to the Fridays. York’s reads  _ Canada Moist Talkers.  _

His hair is long, roots sprinkled with premature grey. He is taller than Nagomi by half a foot, now, looking down at them with bloodshot eyes and disgust. York looks sixteen and haunted, his shoulders heaving in his attempt to get his breathing under control, and for the first time in years, Nagomi is seeing him cry. 

“You weren’t there,” he says, and his words are raw, furious. “You weren’t there when we all got screwed, you didn’t  _ stay,  _ you didn’t  _ hear  _ it!” York’s voice is older too, now, cracking the way a teenager’s does. He’s time all mixed up and broken-hearted and betrayed. “It  _ told  _ me—” His next breath is a choking sort of gasp that catches in his throat, breaking the momentum. “It—”

“York?” Nagomi asks, her voice quiet. York takes the Vibe Check from where it’s slung across his back, a too-small sort of sash that he used to love before the Shelling, and throws it at their feet. 

“You just left,” York says, and it’s an accusation, an open wound. “When the Tigers wanted you. You just left me and Mom. You made her cry.”

“York,” Nagomi says, “she  _ encouraged  _ me to take their offer—”

_ “You  _ made her cry,” York repeats. “Before the book. Before everything. You didn’t visit. You think she cared about your job? She cared that you never fucking visited! That you didn’t come back! That we had to go to  _ games  _ to see you, like fucking tourists!” 

Nagomi cringes. York looks down at the bat between them. It’s a line in the Hawai’i sand. “You’re such a piece of shit,” he says to the ground, and Nagomi doesn’t know whether he’s talking to them, or to the bat, or blaseball, or all of it. “I can’t believe I wanted to be like you.”

Her, then.

“Have a good time playing for Hawai’i,” York says.  _ You don’t deserve it  _ goes unspoken.

_ Kids,  _ Nagomi thinks as he storms away, head down.  _ They think they’re right about everything.  _

* * *

Inside the peanut is dark. It’s warm, though, cramped but cozy, and the Shelled One speaks to York in low hums. It loves him, it says. It will care for him.  _ Our dork,  _ says the Shelled One, and York tosses and turns within the cage, trying to get comfortable. 

* * *

Mrs. Silk dotes on her son. York is her only child, three years old and full of life, dark skin and dark hair that soaks up the sun. She speaks ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i to him, and teaches him English, and he babbles like he’s giving a speech, laughing and sweet and kind. He is her baby. 

But Nagomi is all long glances and private smiles. She doesn’t adore York in the immediate, unflinching way that his mother does; of course not, she’s twenty two years old and has just been introduced to her girlfriend’s child. York is an obstacle, a new hesitation, something to consider. Of course the child doesn’t know this. He doesn’t understand that Nagomi is looking to play blaseball full time; he doesn’t know that she’s one semester off graduating; he doesn’t know that recruiters for the underleagues are circling her, vultures. 

York sees an adult who doesn't love him and sees a challenge. All he has to do is show her, the woman who makes his mother laugh, that he can be just as amazing as anyone. All he has to do is make Nagomi  _ see  _ how much fun they can have together, and then they’ll want to stay in Hawai’i. Nagomi sees a new factor to consider. York sees a game, one that he wins by charming them with his winning smile and green Crocs and willingness to run all the way around the bases whenever Mrs. Silk takes him to the blaseball field, just to show Nagomi that he can. 

And to everyone’s surprise - most of all Nagomi’s - it works. York is relentlessly optimistic, giggling as he collects the blaseballs she sends flying into the atmosphere, delighted by the opportunity to gather them all up so Nagomi can have another go with the pitching machine. He swings around one of her spare bats with nothing to hit, and his form is so atrocious that Nagomi is compelled to set him up with a tee and fix it. 

York is beaming at her the whole time, wriggling with excitement, and he’s not very good, but the first time he manages to hit the ball into the outfield he starts shrieking with joy, pointing and yelling to Mrs. Silk, “Mom! Mom! I did it! Mom, look, ‘Gomi showed me, I did it!” 

Nagomi puts her hands in her pockets and shrugs at her girlfriend, a crooked sort of smile on her lips. Mrs. Silk looks so in love, her dark hair falling down her shoulders in waves. The glance they exchange only lasts a moment before York barrels into his mother’s knees, jabbing a little finger towards the grass and stumbling over his words. “All the way over there!” he says, his grin so wide it can split his face. “I hit it all the way over there!” 

Nagomi doesn’t tell him that, in a game, he’d be out before he got to first. The kid is happy. So is she. 

* * *

“I’m not calling Nagomi,” York says, throwing a blaseball towards the ceiling of his room and catching it in one hand. “They can figure their own stuff out.”

His mother sighs. “I know, baby. I understand. The Fridays’ manager contacted me about publicity appearances. They wanted to make sure your transition to the Talkers allows you to…” Another sigh, heavy. Mrs. Silk doesn’t like publicity, doesn’t like York having an image, never has. “...maintain as much of your current persona as possible with the location change.” 

“Why?” York misses the blaseball on the way down and it bounces once on the floor before he captures it. “I just played for the PODs and everyone hated that. And I’m not eight anymore. Lady Friday hasn’t accepted me since I went in the shell.” He hates how his voice wavers on the last sentence. “Why not have a new image?” 

Mrs. Silk is quiet across the phone for a moment. “Is that what you’d like?” 

“Uh,” York says. “I mean, Mom, it’s not that I don’t love Hawai’i, it’s home, like, it’s always going to be home. But I don’t get why I should have to keep up the image that Nagomi basically made for me when I was a kid when I’m  _ not  _ a kid anymore and she’s not even, like—” 

He cuts himself off. The divorce proceedings started in season six and didn’t resolve until season ten, when Nagomi and Mrs. Silk were practically strangers. She doesn’t like to talk about it, and York doesn’t like to remind her. “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t really want to make it a thing again if we don’t have to.” 

“Okay,” Mrs. Silk says, and her voice is honey warm as always. She sounds relieved. “I’ll talk to the manager tonight.”

“I can do it,” York says. He’s surprising himself with the initiative. “Seriously, like I can call, I should probably do some of my own stuff anyway. Or start learning how to. I want to figure more of it out. And telling a couple team managers I don’t want to talk to Nagomi isn’t that hard.” 

Another beat of silence. York wonders if he’s fucked up, taken more of her little boy away from his mother. Then - “I think that’s a good idea,” Mrs. Silk tells him, and there is an odd, mournful note in her voice. “If you need any help just tell me and I’ll get right on the line.”

“Okay,” York says, trying not to sound too happy about the independence. The blaseball he’s been tossing around hits the ceiling with a distinct thud. “I’ll talk to you later, Mom.”

“Do you have everything you need for practice?”

“Yeah, it’s still all good.”

“Just text me if—”

“I  _ know,  _ seriously.” There’s a smile in York’s voice, more fond than it is annoyed that they have the same conversation every call. 

“Alright.” Mrs. Silk is smiling too. “I love you.”

“You too.”

* * *

The Shelled One was never angry with York. The Shelled One thought York was always doing the best he could, even though he was in that shell. The Shelled One understood. 

Of course York was afraid at first. The shell was large, and he was so, so small, still eight, scrambling around inside a prison made for an adult. He missed his mother. He tried not to cry, the same way he would try not to cry when an incineration sent smoke and the smell of charred flesh spiralling throughout the field. He just had to keep smiling. The people wanted him to keep smiling.

But the Shelled One was kind. “Little one,” it said to him, one night, “why are you so quiet? You have asked for nothing. You have demanded nothing.”

York tried to scramble to his feet. The shell wobbled. York couldn’t tell where he was, or where he’d been taken. Sometimes he still heard blaseball games around him, so it seemed like the Fridays were transporting him to and fro, cocooned. “Who are you?” he asked, and his voice didn’t wobble. 

When he was even younger, York wanted to be an adventurer. He wanted to climb volcanoes and run away as they exploded and shelter everyone to safety. He wanted to discover a new species, or make a breakthrough about the stars. So when a god spoke to him, he was prepared. 

“I am the Shelled One,” says the Shelled One. “You have been given to me.”

That didn’t seem right. “Given?” York says. “People were trying to keep me away from you.”

A loud, reverberating hum fills the shell, and York almost covers his ears to get away from it. He doesn’t. He stands tall, unflinching. “The people say what they must to appease themselves,” the Shelled One says. “But they Blessed you. And their greed won.”

York feels small. When the Super Idol pendant had been given to him, he’d felt important, like he was given a mighty responsibility to help his team and fans alike. He’d been  _ Blessed.  _ It should’ve been a good thing. “I was helping them,” York says. The words sound flimsy.

Somehow, the Shelled One shrugs, and the feeling is massive, like mountains lifting. “And yet they gave you to me regardless. They knew what would happen. I am sure they will call it a tragic accident. But it was their actions that have brought you to me. It was as willing as any of their other blasphemies, to sacrifice a child.”

“I wasn’t sacrificed!” York says. “My mom wouldn’t let anyone!” 

“Your mother,” the Shelled One hums, “is one woman. She has no power against an army of Fans.”

“Well— well, Lady Friday, then!” York cries, but the Shelled One laughs, now, would-be mocking, but too kind.

“Lady Friday does not love you,” the Shelled One says, and its voice is so full of conviction that York can’t help but believe it.

“But she told me—”

“She lied.” York feels the Shelled One’s presence retreat, and he wants it back, wants to know what he’s done to make it leave, too. “I am sorry, little one.”

And then it’s gone. The shell feels colder. 

* * *

“Can you fuck off?” York snaps. Nagomi is at his shoulder, insistent. “I said I don’t want to talk to you.” 

“Ignoring me isn’t going to help your arm,” Nagomi says, and York yanks it away, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Listening to you isn’t going to help anything else,” he grumbles. “Leave me alone.”

“York,” Nagomi says, but he’s taller than them, speeding up and reaching into his pocket to grab a pair of earbuds. 

“Have you considered that I don’t fucking want to talk to you?” He sounds pained, which sucks. “You weren’t there! You can talk all you want about how you were stuck there, but you weren’t me, and it wasn’t the same, and you need to stop fucking telling me how I was trapped, okay? Glad that you’re figuring out your trauma or whatever but maybe you could stop to think for a fucking second that I don’t want or need your help or  _ you  _ in my life! Like, at all!” 

“I never asked for this, York,” Nagomi says, and her voice holds that same solemnity that used to make him feel safe when he was eight. “But we were both held captive by the same entity, no matter how it seemed. We don’t need to push each other away now of all times.” 

“Well, I didn’t  _ ask  _ to get super idoled,” York snaps. “And I didn’t  _ ask  _ that you divorce Mom while I was literally playing for the PODs.”

“That had been in the works for years,” Nagomi says.

“That’s not the point!” Deep breath. York is fuming. “The point is that you left her alone once, and you did it again, and it’s not about being married, it’s about  _ you  _ only thinking about your stupid game and your  _ self  _ and how Hawaii doesn’t like change or whatever the fuck, instead of thinking about my  _ Mom!”  _

There’s quiet between them. York’s chest is heaving and he’s suddenly embarrassed, like he’s told Nagomi too much, like they haven’t known him since he was too young to read. 

“Alright,” Nagomi says, in a way that says that she thinks he’s being irrational, over emotional, hysterical, teenage. York’s arm - his batting arm, the one that the Shelled One filled with shrapnel - burns. He doesn’t scratch at it, because he knows Nagomi would just see his discomfort as proof that they were right all along.

“Cool,” York says, stuffing his earbuds into his ears. “Good game. See you around.” 

* * *

The first time Lady Friday chooses York, he thinks she’d made a mistake. There were so many children on the island of Hawai’i, and all of them felt equally deserving of such a blessing. Why should he be given the gift of time? Why should he be allowed to connect to his home in a way that the others weren’t?

“I don’t know if this is fair, Lady Friday,” York says on his seventh birthday. “How do you know it should be me? Shouldn’t you try out some other kids first?”

Lady Friday laughs and tucks a strand of York’s hair behind his ear. “Your doubt is what makes me so certain. If you were too sure that you were some savior of the island, you would never have been chosen. I see who you are. I see who you try to be even when no one is looking. You do not need to be doubtless, because I am.”

“I don’t understand,” York saus. He is down at the beach, his toes in the sand. “What if I have too many doubts? What if you made a mistake?”

“I don’t make mistakes, York,” Lady Friday tells him. “You’ll see. This is your island, your home. We’ll need you someday.”

And York smiles at her, missing one of his front teeth. “Okay,” he says. “And I can help people?”

She cups his face in her hand, the apples of her cheeks warm and rosy. “You’ll inspire them. You’ll make so many people happy. I promise.” 

Nagomi has just left for Hades. Mrs. Silk is spending more time in her bedroom on sunny days, and sometimes she asks the teenagers down the road to take York to the blaseball fields. York crawls into her bed late at night and curls up next to her and, occasionally, he hears her trying to muffle tears as she strokes his hair and kisses his cheeks and tells him good night. 

The house is quieter without Nagomi. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, Mrs. Silk always laughed. She wasn’t loud, but she would tickle York when he came downstairs for breakfast until he would whoop and shriek and try to tickle her back. Nagomi rounded out their household to a perfect trio, and now they don’t call. 

They’re busy. It makes sense. Nagomi has a tight schedule and is travelling across the country. Sometimes they send the Silks a video of their newest interview, and the two of them would crowd around the desktop, eager to see the person who had influenced so much of their lives on the big screen. 

But more than that they miss her. Nagomi had been around for four years, had been married to Mrs. Silk for two, had been York’s number one cheerleader that whole time in their own quiet way. And now Nagomi doesn’t call. 

She’s busy. 

* * *

York doesn’t know how long he’s been in the cocoon. The Shelled One visits intermittently, bringing news of the outside world, about how the Fridays are faring. They have stopped celebrating his birthday. 

He grows. He grows until the tiny corner of the shell where he used to curl up into a ball doesn’t hold him anymore, until he has to stretch against its walls. When he talks to the Shelled One, his voice cracks, drops, growing older in a way that Lady Friday promised him would never happen. 

The Shelled One was right. She never loved him. York’s god brings him the news that Nagomi has escaped her shell, and he is sure that they never loved him, either, only wanted to use him to get on his mother’s good side and then abandon them both. Nagomi is a coward. Nagomi doesn’t know what it feels like to truly be chosen by the Shelled One, to feel its influence in their mind, to choose it in return. 

And York  _ hurts.  _ He grows into the shell, and feels it on his skin when he falls asleep, on his cheek, his arm, his neck, his legs. One morning he wakes up and, when he pulls himself away from the wall, a chunk of the peanut shell comes away with his forearm, embedded into his flesh. York nearly panics - what else is there to do? This is  _ wrong,  _ he shouldn’t be fusing with his prison - until the Shelled One’s presence creeps into his thoughts. 

“This is natural,” it says. “This is the next step.”

York feels sick. “The next step until what?” 

“In your metamorphosis,” the Shelled One says. “In becoming a POD. It will not hurt.” 

“But it does,” York says, and his voice is a pained whimper. “It itches, it - it hurts to touch my arm.” 

“It will not,” the Shelled One tells him, and brokers no argument. “If you are strong, it will not hurt.”

York wants to be strong. York wants the Shelled One to love him the way that Lady Friday didn’t, the way that Nagomi ran away from. 

“Okay,” he whispers, and he ignores the way his skin purples with the bruising, the way that he grows feverish with the implantation, like his body is fighting infection. “Okay.” 

* * *

Season eleven is long. York spends most of it shivering. He doesn’t know how he feels about Canada. Jesus Koch is nice, but there’s only so much people can do when he’s thousands of miles from home. Fish Summer seems to get it, whatever “it” is. York starts to get a bad reputation with the press - for fighting with Nagomi, for blowing up at the paparazzi that stalked his hotel room during an away game in LA - and he tries to hide it from his mom for however long he can. 

The Crabs are gone, but somehow, Nagomi is still around. They message him once the postseason ends, asking after him, and York wishes, wishes, wishes, that they’d done so eight years ago. It was all he’d wanted. If Nagomi had just stopped by after some of those games in season four, or gone practicing with him in the off season, or took him fishing, or something, York wouldn’t feel like these texts were so hollow, like bottled messages thrown off the remains of burned bridges. 

York goes home. He’s seventeen. He feels wrong. 

His mother welcomes him with open arms, and all York wants to do is run down to the beach and ask Lady Friday for reassurance. He doesn’t, of course; she rejected him long ago. The Shelled One was wrong about a number of things, and York knows that. But he hasn’t managed to shake the notion that Lady Friday never loved him. She was what led him to blaseball, and for that alone, York is sure that whatever defined her idea of “love” was something he could never recover from. 

York makes his own breakfast. He washes the dishes. He knows how to clean a toilet and go to the grocery store. Mrs. Silk visited Canada often during the season, and York was sure to have her by often - he refused, more than anything, to become Nagomi - but for the majority of the season, he lived mostly alone, with the help of the Talkers on occasion. 

His quiet competence invokes Nagomi without meaning to. York carries himself differently, with a certain weight that wasn’t present before. Mrs. Silk notes the strands of grey in his hair, the ever-present black eye next to the shell scars on his cheek, the way that he’s learned to shave in her absence, and knows that the boy he once was is gone. 

The Hawai’i Fridays’ darling was dead the moment the peanut shell closed around him. Only York Silk remains, a spiteful teen with a disarmingly bright, if rare, smile, known more for his temper than his youth. He wears his Super Idol status like an albatross. 

Mrs. Silk clears her throat and York spins around from where he’s washing dishes, relaxing when he sees it’s just her. “I heard some footsteps upstairs last night,” Mrs. Silk says with a soft look on her face. “Everything okay?” 

York knows that she’s expecting him to have nightmares, which isn’t strictly true, but isn’t strictly  _ not  _ true, either. “Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. He dreams of the Shelled One offering him a place on the roster again, promising that this time, the PODs would win. He dreams of Dominic Marijuana hitting that final home run against them, and the way that his chest felt split into two, the way York had screamed as the Shelled One’s influence shrank away into nothing. Some nights, he still wants it back.

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Silk asks, and when York looks up at her, he’s already lost the fight. 

He opts for a half-truth instead. “I just want to go to the beach, Mom.” 

* * *

York doesn’t know what to expect the first time he and the other PODs descend. He has doubts. He’s always had doubts. The Shelled One doesn’t like them, so York tries to keep them to himself, but nonetheless they fester in his mind, skittering around in the dustiest part of his thoughts. 

But the victory over the Charleston Shoe Thieves is one York will never forget. He’d never experienced such a rush of adrenaline before in his life. The gasps of the stands when he steps out of the shell, unfolding like a butterfly spreading its wings for the first time after metamorphosis, reborn in transformation, are filled with emotion: relief, horror, fear, confusion. 

The Shelled One’s influence is strong around his shoulders, egging him forward, and York grips the Vibe Check tight as he takes his place in line. He is smiling. His irises are blood red, his shoulder encased in shell until the elbow, and he is exhilarated. The people’s fear is water against parched lips. They would learn their lesson. York would teach it to them at the Shelled One’s side over, and over, and over. 

There are jeers and screams when the Shelled One lowers itself to the people’s level, its voice booming as it croons,  _ “Our dork.”  _ Someone throws a rock that barely makes it onto the field. Their anguish is palpable in hurled curses, in the violent pulsing of the crowd, straining against the stands that hold them. 

York looks at the fans who sacrificed him and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. 

* * *

In season two, Nagomi is traded to the Fridays. York is unbelievably excited. He talks about her moving home, and is convinced that she’ll live with them again no matter how many times Mrs. Silk explains that she’ll have to stay with the team. York wonders, prays, dreams of reuniting his family. Maybe Lady Friday will keep Nagomi close. 

Nagomi visits, but it’s not the same. It’s only for short periods at a time, and often she is taking Mrs. Silk out for dinner and an apology about her first busy season with the Tigers. York understands. They’re married, and so it makes sense that they’d want time alone, without him, but it still stings. Nagomi tries to come home once a week or so, but as the season passes, York is less and less convinced that she’ll show for dinner, opting instead to spend the afternoon recovering with her team.

It makes sense. Of course it makes sense; Nagomi’s a professional. They have a lot on their plate. They don’t have time to drive from the stadium to the Silks’ for a home cooked meal, and York tries to understand, he does. 

But she could call. She could send a card from one of those fancy stadiums. When they did come by, they could take York down to the fields for practice, like they used to before Nagomi signed their contract and packed their bags. 

They could at least cancel. That way York wouldn’t have to see his mother cast a helpless glance towards the third place setting, its portion cold and untouched. That way he could stop getting his hopes up, and he could stop being disappointed. 

* * *

When the PODs win the first Day X, the Shelled One is pleased, righteous, furious that the undead pitcher from Charleston would so much as dare put up a fight. It is something close to gentle. York is no longer confined to the pod, but he still returns to it, like a baby blanket or a first love. 

“I’d like to go see my mother,” York says one night. The PODs are dispersed across the country, and York has found himself tonight in Georgia, wandering in a field. 

The Shelled One is at once attentive. “You cannot.” 

“She misses me,” York says, insistent. “I can’t leave her alone, not now. She saw me on Day X. She knows I’m okay.” He scratches at his arm absentmindedly. His skin is dry, flaking off at places, hot to touch with likely infection where the pieces of shell have fused into his flesh. 

“You are not the same, York,” the Shelled One says. “You have changed. She is not ready.”

“Come on,” York says. “The pictures were everywhere. She knows me, she knows I grew up and everything. She’s my  _ mom,  _ I can’t just leave her.” 

“Your separation is not permanent,” the Shelled One tells him. “Your mother has no strikes against her.”

“Then why can’t I—”

“Protection,” the Shelled One rumbles, and York knows he has lost the argument. “Your mother is not bound by the game. Visiting her would bring her into it. Tell me, York, would you like to bind your mother here? Is one not enough?” 

York flinches. “That’s not fair. I just don’t want to abandon her.” 

“A degree of separation is not abandonment,” the Shelled One says. Its voice is disdainful, slimy, nothing like the way it was after their victory. “Someday you must learn independence. For now, trust me when I say that no harm will come to her.”

“But Nagomi—”

“Quiet.” York has seen the Shelled One in full force, bellowing down curses at the population of Choux stadium, but never before now has he feared the behemoth. “Nagomi left moments before our revelation.”

“Nagomi always leaves,” York says in a whisper, like invoking her will strike against the god. “I don’t want my mom to be alone. Nagomi won’t come back.”

“Eventually,” says the Shelled One, and leaves before York can say anything else. 

Before Day X, the PODs were in individual shells, isolated from one another. Now, they wander the country, bound by the Shelled One to one another. York can feel that Jessica is a few cities away, and knows that he could make it there if he caught the next bus a mile away. York knows that, if he tried, he could find Quitter in New York City, that he could keep walking until he found them, like a homing pigeon or a tracking device. 

He’s not going to. But he could. For the first time in his life York knows exactly where his family is and how he could find them, can feel it like a tug above his belly button. He wishes he could walk to Hawai’i and tell his mother that everything’s alright. He was given to the Shelled One, he could explain. 

Instead, York’s arm scrapes against the remains of the peanut shell, and he holds himself tight as the scab bleeds against his palm. His hair is long, matted. But he does not question the god that has brought him here. He only knows that he must wait. 

* * *

York wakes up on high alert. He’d dreamed about the shell again, about the home-ness that it brought him, about the strange sense of safety he still longs for. York is in his mother’s home, safe and sound, in his old room that’s still decorated from the before days, with bright green walls and a graphic print of a cheerful town on a rug on the floor. 

It’s childish, and sure, York  _ gets  _ why Mrs. Silk isn’t exactly ready to move on, but fuck, he sure is. It’s dark out, and moonlight filters through York’s window as he sits up in bed, recovering from whatever his dream was. Calling it a nightmare would be wrong. ‘Nightmare’ implies that the experience was stressful, or terrifying. This was more a guilty pleasure. No one could know that York flourished under the Shelled One’s guidance. The Shelled One was evil and so, that must mean, is he. 

York tosses his blankets away and rolls out his shoulder, wincing. His bicep is bleeding again, and the blood’s stained his sheets, so he’s going to have to tell his mom, who’s going to worry, and so on and so forth. The injury today is bleeding slowly, dribbling out from a gash that is more shell than human being. It itches so badly York wants to stick his fingers into the open wound and scratch until it stops. He doesn’t, just squeezes his hands together and tries to keep himself from crying. 

The worst thing about the pain is that it’s  _ constant.  _ The Shelled One had told him that if he was strong, it wouldn’t hurt, and even though York can see the tender bruising that runs along his forearm and up to his wrist, there is a small part of him that wonders if he simply isn’t strong enough to fight through it. He doesn’t know how to heal when the wound hasn’t scarred over, when it’s still a part of him, clawing itself into his skin.

The worst thing about the shell in York’s arm is that it makes him look like Nagomi. Sure, it’s on his left arm and Nagomi’s right, and yeah, it’s a peanut shell, not a crab, but he can't help but look in the mirror and see broad shoulders with an inhuman arm without thinking of her. York remembers when he’d wished for carcinization, to be more like her, as if it would make Nagomi finally come back. Now the shelled scars and debris that litter his arm only inspire a dull resignation. 

York gets up. Starts pulling his sheets off. Folds them, puts them in a corner. Mechanically, he pushes his little play table off of his play carpet and rolls that up, too, shoving it into a corner. He takes down the little play posters of the blaseball players he’d had as a child - some season 1 Hades Tigers lineup merch that came with the Tlopps cards, his favorite dinosaurs - and lays them out in a clean pile. 

There’s blood running down his arm and salt on his cheeks as York takes his old room apart, separating it into piles and folding up who he used to be. After about an hour the door opens. Mrs. Silk. She sees him on the floor, stacking picture books, and sighs. The sound floats into the room like a hug. 

York looks up. 

“York,” she says, and then he’s ugly crying, crumpled, unable to explain what he’s done or why. 

Mrs. Silk kneels in front of her son and he collapses into her, blood smeared onto his cheek unthinkingly from where he tried to wipe his eyes. He’s tall, and strong, a growing seventeen year old boy, and he’s sobbing into the crook of her neck, wordless. 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, pulling away to breathe. “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t—”

“It’s alright.” She pushes hair out of his eyes, gentle, holds his face in her hands and wipes away the smear with her thumb. “You don’t have to apologize to me.”

“I didn’t want to abandon you but I did,” York manages, almost gagging on the words. “I did and it wasn’t— fair— I—”

“Breathe, York,” Mrs. Silk murmurs, taking a long breath in through her nose. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s okay.” 

“I just—”

“It’s okay,” she says again, and she is sturdy and strong and York is so afraid of hurting her but can’t force himself to pull away. “You’re going to be okay.” 

* * *

Nagomi comes home one day, looking bashful. York has just started to resent her, but the feeling is not nearly strong enough to stop him from jumping to open the door when he sees her outside. “Gomi!” he says, grinning. “You came! Mom’s putting dinner on the plates, can you get drinks?”

They ruffle his hair and tilt up his chin and say, “You’ve grown,” in a way that makes York feel proud just for standing on their own two feet. 

“I’m almost five feet,” York says, even though he’s not. He’s going to be pretty soon, maybe, so it counts. Nagomi laughs.

“Sure you are.” They make for the kitchen, poking their head in with a soft smile. “Hey, babe.”

Mrs. Silk almost drops the glass she’s holding. “Nagomi!” she says, her hand flying to her chest. “Goodness, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” 

“It’s alright.” Mrs. Silk smiles, tentative, looking at Nagomi’s face with a quiet sort of hunger, nostalgia, love. “Come, we’re just setting the table. You’re lucky you made it in time.” 

“York told me to get the drinks,” Nagomi says, one corner of their mouth lifting higher than the other, and Mrs. Silk laughs. 

“Of course he did,” she says fondly, shaking her head. “Here, just set out the iced tea and sit down. You must be tired.”

“I’m fine,” Nagomi says, “if you need anything.” 

Mrs. Silk shoos her away. “I’m just putting food on the plate. Sit.” 

“Alright, alright.” Nagomi lifts their hands in surrender, leaning forwards to pick up the two glasses of iced tea on the countertop. 

For the first time in a while, the house feels like a home. Nagomi doesn’t act like a visitor, as she so often has recently, but rather the role model York looks up to, and his mother’s loving wife. They laugh and swap stories over the meal, of school and work and play with the big kids down at the blaseball fields. 

No one mentions the hardships. They’re forgotten in the hour when Mrs. Silk pours herself a glass of wine and loosens up in a delightful, joyous way York hasn’t seen in a while. Nagomi taps him on the shoulder as he clears his plates and says, “I have your birthday present with me.” 

York bounces with excitement.  _ “Really?”  _

“Really,” they say, the look on their face knowing. York’s birthday is still two weeks away, but he’s excited to be eight. It’s a big one: divisible by both two and four, and his first full year under the eternal youth of Lady Friday.

“Can I open it?” York asks, glancing back to his mother. “Please?” 

“You’re going to have to,” Nagomi says, taking a small envelope from her pocket. “Go ahead.” 

York tears the envelope open and gasps.  _ “No way.” _

“Yes way,” Mrs. Silk says with a proud smile, squeezing his shoulder. “The Fridays are playing the Tacos right on this island on your birthday. Nagomi told me and we were able to get tickets.” 

Eyes the size of saucers, York looks up at them both, and then wraps his tiny arms around Nagomi’s middle. “Thank you thank you thank you,” he says, and his smile is wide enough to split his face in two. 

“Yeah,” Nagomi says, patting his back. “It’s no problem.” 

Inside the envelope are two tickets that each read:  _ Admit one. Fridays vs Tacos. Season 2, Day 74. You are now participating in the cultural event of blaseball. _

York can’t  _ wait.  _

* * *

There’s going to be a siesta. The longest one anyone’s ever seen. Nagomi is in Hawai’i, and York— “There’s a training program,” Mrs. Silk says, sighing. “They’re trying to get you in Canada for four months out of the year.” 

York doesn’t say that he wishes it could be longer. “I’m ok with that,” he tells her, putting on his best ‘I’ll-push-through-it’ smile. “Gotta stay ready for the next season, right?” 

His mother looks at him with a fond sadness that makes York feel guilty for wanting out. “That’s right,” she says, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand. “I’m sure it’ll go by quickly. Those horrible team managers, trying to take your off time. It’s so exploitative.”

York shrugs. “It’s always been like this,” he says. “I guess I was just too young to see it before.” He’s eighteen, leaning into his natural hair color, leaving the grey uncolored. It makes people uncomfortable, and York likes that. He sees their eyes linger on the silver at his temples, wondering if it’s real and already knowing the answer. Unlike the scars, his hair doesn’t hurt him, and so he leaves the consequences of the idol board on full display. 

Mrs. Silk sighs. She does that a lot. “I suppose.” She sounds disapproving. “Are you sure you’re alright with the program? I could always—”

“It’s fine, Mom,” York says. “There’s not going to be any danger, it’s siesta. It’s probably a lot of batting practice and pickup games or whatever. Plus I don’t really know my teammates yet, so this could be a good way to spend time with them. They all live in Canada.” 

The look on Mrs. Silk’s face is all protest, but she bites it down. “Okay,” she says, raising her hands in surrender. “If that’s what you want.” 

She leaves the subject alone after that, but York still feels like shit when she helps him pack three weeks later. 

* * *

The sun is shining in Hawai’i. It is a Friday. York Silk is turning eight year old. Nagomi came by early to pass down her old Tigers uniform, telling him it was his real birthday present, and York insisted on wearing it right away, even though it’s much too big. 

He is a bundle of energy. He always is, but now he’s practically vibrating, looking around the stadium like it’s the first time he’s ever seen it. He’s wearing an adult sized Tigers jersey and a tiny Fridays hat, and the colors clash in a lime and maroon cacophony. Mrs. Silk follows him around as he stares wide eyed at the vendors’ carts, and promises him one treat if he doesn’t cut in line.

The sun is shining, and sweat beads on York’s forehead, so he chooses a sundae with strawberries and caramel. Eating it takes up most of his focus soon after it is purchased.

Nagomi went all out, so York and Mrs. Silk end up in the Fridays’ box seats next to not one but  _ three  _ pitchers. York keeps tugging on Mrs. Silk’s arm and whispering,  _ “Look!”  _ and trying the best he can not to be rude.

When the game starts, the sky darkens, and a deafening noise rings throughout the field. The shrill whistle fades and a loud, mechanical voice booms, “Play ball.” 

And the players do. 

York, for three and a half innings, is entranced, and when the umpire points a damning finger at Jessi Wise, time slows to a crawl. 

“York.” 

He nearly jumps out of his chair. “Lady Friday?” 

She is translucent, beautiful as ever, and brings with her the smell of flowers on the breeze. “Yes,” she says, and she waves a hand over the field. “Do you remember when I told you that you would inspire people?” 

It was a year ago. York has talked to Lady Friday many times since then, always eager to please his enigmatic patron, never learning how to follow up on her promise. He nods. 

Lady Friday smiles gently. “I need you to walk down onto the field,” she says, as a bolt of lightning explodes from the tip of the umpire’s finger. “I need you to pick up the bat. I will be with you always, York. I am asking you to accept your destiny.”

Without thinking about it, York begins to climb over the barrier separating the box seats from the field. It’s high up, and he has to scrape his feet to find footholds on the stadium wall. “And I’ll help people?” he says as he reaches the ground, looking up at Lady Friday.

She nods. “You’ll bring them so much joy. You’ll be their dork, little one.” 

York starts walking towards the Fridays player, to comfort her in her last moments, but Lady Friday holds him back. “Not too close. It burns. Let me.” 

She ushers him behind her, and he follows, peeking behind her skirts as the fire arcs towards Jessi. Lady Friday approaches, and Jessi looks up, eyes wide, recognizing the goddess before her. “Lady Friday,” she whispers, mournful. “Is it time?”

“I am sorry, my dear,” Lady Friday murmurs, reaching out an incorporeal hand. “It is.”

Jessi nods. “I wish I had more.”

“We all do.” 

Jessi opens her mouth to say something else, but the umpire’s beam strikes her in the back, and her goodbye is transformed into an anguished cry, half a moment long and lasting forever. Lady Friday dissipates. York is left standing on the field. His mother is screaming his name, but he hardly hears it. 

_ Rogue umpire incinerated Fridays hitter Jessi Wise! Replaced by York Silk.  _

* * *

The second time the PODs descend, the Shelled One does not force them to hold back. Quitter’s first hit knocks out the Crabs entirely, and York hungers for another source of competition, another one of the ILB’s so-called champions. Their best were childsplay. Maybe the Shoe Thieves will want another go, daring to face Axel again. Maybe the Shelled One can bestow another curse upon them, another reminder that they are pitiful, small, pathetic. 

When the Hall Stars begin to form from the ground, York can’t help but feel excitement. The crowd roars against them, but York is only more eager to destroy the team the ILB has resurrected, to show them that they are nothing, that his god is infinite. The Shelled One will be eternal, and York can show his mother what good he’s done, punishing those who have brought hurt and bringing the Shelled One’s justice throughout the league. 

York is a harbinger of good, like Lady Friday said so long ago. He doesn’t know if he still is an inspiration. He doesn’t care. 

One of his old teammates is among those who rise from the ground, and they give York pause. Sebastian Sunshine was incinerated on the same day as Hendricks Rangel, two days after his second eighth birthday, and York had watched as they dissolved into light while Lady Friday stood at his side, reminding him not to cry. York had believed he’d never see them again. 

But now Sebastian stood against him, distilled into a form that York could see, hold, high five, if he wanted. Sebastian doesn’t recognize him. York can tell by the way their eyes slide over his face. York without his innocence is not the same person, and Sebastian’s blank expression is proof. 

“What are you  _ doing?”  _ the Shelled One roars in his ear, and it’s enough to get York back into the game, back into the noise of the stadium and the thrill of the fight.

It’s a fight they lose. Dominic Marijuana strikes the killing blow, and York feels like he is dying. The pain of being trapped in the shell was nothing. The claustrophobia was nothing. The pit in his stomach after he saw Jessi Wise become ash was nothing. Nagomi’s abandonment, Jaylen’s resurrection, Lady Friday’s rejection, nothing, nothing, nothing. York is on fire. York cannot breathe. York isn’t dying and the pain will not stop. 

He can feel his heart slamming against his ribcage and its pulse in his ears, ringing, shrieking, crying, and he’s calling out - for Jess? For Axel, for Quitter? For his mother, for Nagomi? - he’s screaming for someone to help him, dropping to his knees and clawing at his chest like he can tear out the pain behind it. 

Dominic Marijuana puts down the bat, tries to approach York like a wounded animal, but York lashes out with a hand, nails outstretched, clawing for purchase anywhere, like drawing blood will remind him what civility is, and the Millennials’ former captain backs away. Something is wrong. Something is horribly, desperately wrong, because York can’t feel the Shelled One. York  _ can’t feel the Shelled One.  _ Its influence is gone, like a lightswitch, and he looks up to see the Monitor spit pieces of it onto the field. 

They rain down, meteorites. 

York is covered in sweat. The rest of the PODs look poor, but none so much as him, and York knows in that moment that he was the Shelled One’s favorite. It wanted to keep him, the way that everyone else did. But the Shelled One, at least, let him grow. 

* * *

“You don’t understand. It’s fine.” They’re in Halifax and it’s raining. Year two of the Siesta, after the coffee cup. 

Nagomi follows him out of the apartment complex where he’s been living for the past three months, and had lived the year before. “Then make me understand, York,” they say, and he grits his teeth. It’s been three years since the Shelled One was splintered apart, three years since York was sent to the Moist Talkers, three years since he told Nagomi that she was a piece of shit, that he couldn’t believe he ever wanted to be like her. 

York is nineteen and only somewhat less temperamental, figuring out how to move away and juggle blaseball and support his mom at the same time, growing into a friendship with Ziwa Mueller and Fish Summer and figuring out what fitting in looks like on his own terms. “It doesn’t  _ matter,”  _ he says. “It’s been forever. I said it’s fine. Can you just—”

“Do not,” Nagomi snaps, and York flinches away, then hates himself for it, “tell me to leave. Do not tell me to do something you have blamed me for for years. Do not tell me it’s fine.” 

York looks at them. Nagomi has never quite gotten used to the pain in his eyes when he does that. Her gaze flicks to his temples, where his hair has gone grey, and for a moment, he looks satisfied. “I don’t want to talk to you,” he says. “Not about this. Because you don’t get it. And because you fucking  _ can’t.”  _

“I was in that shell for three years,” Nagomi says. They shouldn’t be angry with him; he’s a child, but gods above they are furious. “I know better than anyone what it was like—”

“Fuck you.” York’s voice is quiet, hurt. “You think I’m just  _ not ready  _ to open up? You think you can convince me? You think that somehow you’re going to say some magic fucking words and make me better and you can show me off?”

“No,” Nagomi says. “I am your stepmother.”

“Was.”

“I have known you since you were three years old.”

“And I was  _ trapped  _ at eight for years,” York cuts in, desperate. 

“I understand that you’re angry with me. I understand why. But I am not your enemy. It took us both. It tried to use us both. We are the same, in that regard.”

“Stop comparing me to you,” York says, backing up a few feet. “I’m nothing like you. I’m not.” 

“York,” Nagomi says, and she is gentle. “You don’t have to like me to understand that we were both hurt by—”

“It didn’t  _ hurt  _ me,” York cries, and there is something raw in his tone that contradicts the still healing wounds on his arm, just fully scarring over after three years of bloody nights and itching, painful days. “It didn’t  _ hurt  _ me, and you don’t  _ get  _ that, and that’s fine, I’m not trying to make you because you don’t have to, because you didn’t  _ feel  _ it, because it didn’t want you! Because it was fine without you!” 

“Because I didn’t feel what?” Nagomi asks, and York knots his hands in his hair, angry, and angry at himself for being so overcome. 

“Because it didn’t  _ love  _ you,” he spits, and whatever Nagomi was expecting, it wasn’t this. “Because it didn’t love you and it didn’t take care of you and it didn’t stay for you and it didn’t protect you and it loved  _ me.  _ Out of everyone.  _ Me.”  _

The words are ludicrous, but York says them like he believes them, like he has never believed anything so intensely in his life. There are tears rolling down his cheeks again and Nagomi is reminded of the season ten election, holding her transfer slip to the Hawai’i Fridays. 

“The Shelled One tried to kill us all,” Nagomi says. “It didn’t love you. I’m sorry, York. It was a deception. Just like everything else it ever told us.” 

York flips up his hood. The rain is coming down in a light, noncommittal drizzle. “Like you’d know,” he says, and turns on his heel. 

* * *

York goes home. Home-home, Hawai’i, his real home, not Canada. He can’t talk to Lady Friday. He can’t talk to Nagomi; he’s said everything he’s ever needed to say to them. HIs mother would be too worried. The Shelled One is dead. 

York sleeps through the night, and wakes up in the morning. 

* * *

He begins spending every four months out of the year in Canada. After three years, he spends six. Once York hits twenty two, he sort of stops growing, and for a while he’s frustrated until Fish Summer explains that none of them have aged in years. It’s weird, but it’s a new kind of weird, a kind that means that York is an adult, an athlete like the rest of them. He’s the same age as Nagomi when they first met him. There is an odd sort of grief in knowing that he has lost the years she had to go to high school, or find love, even though Ziwa says that there’s nothing to be lost from not attending high school. 

Ziwa waves him down at practice one day, and York jogs over, his smile crooked and warm. “Hey.” 

“Hey yourself. Ready for the Dot to kill you?” 

York groans. “Why does the Dot need practice?” 

“You’re the one who needs practice, dumbass,” they say, cuffing him on the shoulder. “That’s the whole point. First to three strikeouts loses.” 

“You’re the worst,” York grumbles. 

The bench sags as Fish sits next to the both of them. “Do I hear intra-team harassment? I’m reporting you to management.” 

“Joke’s dead, Summer,” Ziwa says, in a way that implies they still think it’s funny.

“I’m hurt.”

York bends down to tie his cleats. “Yeah, yeah, you’re both very dramatic, well done. Warm up?” 

“Woah, slow down there, champ!” Fish says, making an exaggerated point to roll their shoulders. “We can’t all be young and spry like you.” 

“I’ll kill you.” 

“I’d love to see you try,” Fish says, laughing in the face of York’s deadpan. “Seriously. Two minutes. Just got here.” 

When he’s with the Talkers, in the relative safety of siesta, York has moments where he forgets all of it: the Blessing, the idol board, the Shelled One. He’s just playing the game he’s always loved, with some other pros around his age, swapping fielding advice and ice packs and bickering over the right way to flip a bat. He’s more independent than he’s ever been in his life, and he feels like a child, just learning to navigate good and bad, right and wrong. 

And sometimes in the moments after he forgets, it all comes crashing down on him. They live in the same apartment complex, and York would have wanted them punished, flinching, falling apart. He can’t deny that he fell for what the Shelled One wanted, hook, line, and sinker. He can’t deny that he felt the want like a fire in his stomach, hot and angry and intense, an emotion that, although coerced, was all his own. York’s anger ran hot, and does still. 

It was the Moist Talkers that took York’s blind adoration for the Shelled One and turned it into revulsion. It was their kindness, their laughter, their acceptance, their grief that reminded him that he was not the only one wronged by the game. The coalition he thought he’d found was false, implanted. The family he’d thought he had was artificial. 

The siren song of the infinite remains, though. When Wyatt Quitter eventually reaches into it, York will not be surprised. 

* * *

At the beginning of his six months in Hawai’i, York goes down to the beach. It’s late — one or two in the morning, he doesn’t really check — and there’s moonlight on the water, shimmering, lovely. York stands at the shore and waits. He’s not positive that Lady Friday will show; after all, he hasn’t reached out to her in years, not since she severed ties with him after he was put in the shell. 

York read the statement that said the Fridays weren’t going to celebrate his eighth birthday anymore. He knew that it meant they would ignore him altogether. He knew that it was verbal proof that Lady Friday no longer thought him worthy, that they weren’t going to celebrate him at all. 

“Lady Friday?” he calls into the wind, and to his surprise, there’s a familiar ripple on the water and the smell of blossoms on the wind. 

At first, York thinks she looks different than before. There’s something about the way she carries herself that feels cold, unforgiving. She is translucent and beautiful as always, but guarded, dangerous. Lady Friday is upwelling water on a windy shore, brought from the deep. Were he younger, or softer, York would have taken a step back. As it is, he stands sturdy, staring up at her.

This is who Lady Friday has been all along. She is still glowing softly, but York isn’t enamored with it the way he was before. All that was once comforting to him seems eerie, uncanny, dependent on the worship of the viewer. She smiles, and her teeth have always been sharp, but now seem menacing. “York. You’re home.”

“I’ve been in Hawai’i a lot,” he says, stubborn. “Six months out of every year.”

“But now you’ve come back,” Lady Friday says, and she is the reaper who pulled the incinerated out of the game and guided the replacements onto the field, “to  _ me.  _ To us.” 

York shakes his head. “I play for Canada now. Not changing.” 

“Play for, perhaps,” Lady Friday murmurs. “But you belong—”

“I don’t belong to anyone,” York snaps, and there is steel in his voice. “Not to you, not to Mom, or Nagomi, or the Shelled One, or the Fridays, or the Talkers. I’m not  _ anyone’s.”  _

“Home,” Lady Friday finishes, looking surprised in a way that is all plastic, as if York’s outburst is unprovoked. “You belong home.”

York points to his mother’s home. “Then I belong there. And you know what? Then I belong in Canada. With Fish and Ziwa and everyone. If I belong  _ home,  _ then I don’t belong anywhere fucking  _ near  _ you.” 

Lady Friday’s face hardens. “I thought you might say that.”

“Because it’s true!”

“I gave you so much, York,” she says, and that’s the thing that makes him flinch, makes him look down in residual shame. “I chose you. I gave you the chance to inspire people. I brought you to a destiny that gave you eternal youth, and fame, and love from all who watched you.”

“They turned me into cash,” York says. “They put me into the shell. They—”

Lady Friday tuts. “They Blessed you. And you were ungrateful.”

Tears sting at York’s eyes. Lady Friday speaks in a way that everything she says sounds like fact. Were he younger, he would have believed her, the same way that he— “You sound just like it,” York whispers, and there is loathing in his words. “The Shelled One. You sound the same.”

“I am not that wretched thing.”

“Then stop talking like it,” York says. “Stop acting like it. Stop acting like you’re so good when you’re just the same god on a smaller throne.” Lady Friday’s face is impassive. “For fuck’s sake, I don’t know what anyone expected when you put me into a bloodsport on my eighth birthday. Sorry I wasn’t quiet enough about getting fucked over. Sorry that I wasn’t tragic enough to keep celebrating. Sorry that I grew up and you couldn’t manipulate me anymore.” 

Deep breath. York looks up, looks Lady Friday in the eyes. “And from the bottom of my heart, I hope they all haunt you. All the dead. Everyone you brought into the game. And I hope they don’t forgive you. Because when I go down to the hall, it’s going to be your fault. Don’t forget it.” 

* * *

The siesta’s almost over. York has been paying rent on his place in Canada for a while now. The sun is shining when he walks into the kitchen, his hair pulled into a low bun at the nape of his neck. Mrs. Silk is humming. She hasn’t done that in a while. “Morning, Mom,” York says. “Can we talk?”

She turns, and oh, the smile on her face is so kind. “Of course,” she says. “Here, sit down. Coffee? The water’s hot.”

“I’m good,” York says, lacing his fingers together. “Look, I wanted to talk about Canada.”

Mrs. Silk sits across from him. “What about Canada?” She’s changed. Unlike active blaseball players, Mrs. Silk ages, and the grey in her hair and the lines on her face stand out starkly as York takes a good look at her. He looks just like her, always has. 

York takes a deep breath. “I want to figure out how to go back and forth,” he says. “Canada and here. I’ll come home on the off-season, obviously, but there’s the whole problem of what to do when blaseball’s on and I’m in Canada, and I was thinking you could come with me, but I don’t want you to have to leave Hawai’i if you don’t have to, and—”

“York,” Mrs. Silk says softly, and he glances over, finally meeting her eyes. “It’s okay for you to go. I understand.” 

“Really?” He is at once flooded by unimaginable relief and guilt. “But I don’t want to—”

“I know,” she says. “But you’re an adult now, York. Everyone leaves home eventually. You’re not a little kid anymore and I’m not going to treat you like one.” 

York’s forehead crinkles. “But I thought you wanted to keep me here.” 

His mother laughs. “Of course I want you with me always,” she says. “I always will, I’m your mother. But that doesn’t mean I should. It doesn’t mean that the time we’ll have together in the off-season will be any less special. Okay?” 

“Okay,” York says, nodding. “And you’re sure?” 

“All birds learn to fly eventually,” Mrs. Silk says, and she looks so proud of him. “You should see what the sky is like.”

* * *

Nagomi doesn’t know what she’s expecting when York calls her, but it isn’t an apology. And she’s correct; she doesn’t get one. Instead York gives her a warning. 

“Just stay away from Lady Friday,” he says, like Nagomi wasn’t planning to. “You know, just while you’re there.” 

They both know Nagomi isn’t going to be in Hawai’i for long. As soon as a blessing comes along, she’s off to whichever lucky team wins the raffle. York doesn’t need to give her the advice, because Lady Friday knows it too. He tells her anyway. 

“Right,” Nagomi says, frowning. “York, I can—” 

And then it hits them. York isn’t apologizing, but he is giving her as close to forgiveness as he is willing and able. At the same time Nagomi knows it isn’t forgiveness, that the past decade and a half have been too much to become water under the bridge. They exist in a quiet limbo, with their mirroring scars and their serene pasts, and York is offering an olive branch.

“Thanks,” Nagomi says. 

“Yeah,” says York, relieved. “No problem.” 

* * *

York packs his bags a month before season twelve begins. Mrs. Silk helps him. She cries when she drops him off at the airport, but she’s smiling the whole way there. The flight is long, and the season ahead will be longer.

York arrives at his apartment to a barrage of texts from Fish, from Ziwa, from Jesus, and the constant buzz as he puts his clothes back in their appropriate drawers is a warm reminder that he’s home, he’s home, he’s home.

The sun sets on Halifax. York Silk sleeps through the night, and wakes up in the morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who reads these things as they're being written, in particular the Lake Michigan Lore Campground and Stara for looking it over. As always, comments and kudos are much appreciated.
> 
> And RIV York Silk. He was our dork. <3


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